Lawsuit accuses Washington County officials of holding infant’s decomposing body for months in death penalty case
Share this post:
A death penalty case against a Washington County man charged with killing his baby took a grisly turn last week when the father sued top county officials for not releasing his son’s body for seven months, delaying funeral arrangements even as the infant’s body decomposed.
Jordan Clarke, the father, accused the district attorney of leveraging his case for political gain in order to promote “tough on crime” policies and win election.
Meanwhile, the lawsuit claims, Sawyer Clarke’s corpse remained month after month in the county’s custody, even as it continued to decay.
The suit, filed Friday in Washington County Common Pleas Court by Clarke, Sawyer’s mother, Allisha Moomau of Punxsutawney, and two people acting on behalf of the parents, accuses the county district attorney and coroner, as well as a judge, with abuse of a corpse.
Experts consulted by TribLive said holding a body for so long is highly irregular.
The parents’ lawyer, Noah Geary, put it a different way.
“It’s so macabre,” Geary said. “What they did to this little boy and these families is obscene, and they have to be held responsible — civilly and criminally.”
‘Severe, violent injury’
Sawyer was 2 months old when he died on May 24, 2022.
Clarke, 38, of Peters, told police that he was walking with Sawyer in the basement of his home on Pleasantview Drive just after 9 p.m. on May 23, 2022, when he tripped on a grocery bag and fell with the child in his arms.
The boy began to cry and then became unresponsive.
Clarke yelled for his sister to call 911. When first responders arrived, Sawyer was blue, according to a criminal complaint against Clarke.
The baby was taken to UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
Doctors there said Sawyer’s injuries were “gravely concerning for physical abuse” and inconsistent with someone falling on him.
Sawyer died the next day. An autopsy by Allegheny County authorities showed the cause was bleeding on the brain. But officials could not decide whether it was an accident, a homicide or something else. The manner of death was listed as undetermined.
Still, Washington County District Attorney Jason Walsh charged Clarke with homicide, claiming Sawyer died from shaken baby syndrome.
Peters police arrested Clarke on June 7, 2022.
Walsh is seeking the death penalty.
At Clarke’s preliminary hearing later that month, Dr. Matthew Valente, with the Child Advocacy Center at Children’s, said Sawyer had extensive bleeding in both eyes, “which is suggestive of severe, violent injury,” and a torn retina.
“That is gravely concerning for physical abuse,” Valente said. “That suggests that this child has been shaken.”
Valente testified that the injuries were not consistent with children who fall from a standing height or roll off beds and couches.
“We just do not see these kinds of injuries as a result of a standing fall from ground level.”
The district judge held the charges against Clarke for trial. Clarke has remained incarcerated since then.
Questionable meeting
According to the lawsuit, which names as defendants Walsh, Common Pleas Judge John DiSalle and Coroner Tim Warco, the autopsy was performed on May 25, 2022, and his body was released to Beinhauers Funeral Home in Peters the next day.
Instead of allowing the family to move forward with funeral arrangements, the complaint said that Walsh contacted the funeral home and coroner and told them they were not to permit the burial or cremation of the baby.
The funeral home complied, the lawsuit said.
“Defendant Walsh — despite not having an opinion from a forensic pathologist that the case was a homicide — and for sheer political purposes because he was running for office of district attorney and wanting to look ‘tough on crime’ to increase his election prospects, directed the Peters Township Police Department to file murder charges against Jordan Clarke — who is innocent — on June 7, 2022, just two weeks later,” the lawsuit said.
Walsh, who had been appointed DA in 2021, ran for election in 2023.
The funeral home retained Sawyer’s body, which was decomposing, the complaint said.
The lawsuit alleges that officials from the funeral home repeatedly called the coroner’s office to seek permission for Sawyer’s burial or cremation, and they continued to be told they could not release the body.
Tim Uhrich, the coroner’s office solicitor, said Tuesday he could not comment on the case.
DiSalle’s staff said the judge could not comment.
Walsh did not return a message on Tuesday.
For months, the lawsuit said, Sawyer’s remains continued to decompose, but Walsh refused to allow their release.
On Sept. 20, 2022, Walsh improperly met with DiSalle without notifying Clarke or his criminal defense attorney that they were discussing his case, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims the meeting was improper.
DiSalle signed an order requiring the coroner to assume custody of Sawyer until the criminal case against Clarke was resolved.
The lawsuit calls the order “preposterous,” given that the body would continue to decompose, and a death penalty case can go on for years.
Walsh and DiSalle knew such an order was “illegal, constituted wanton mistreatment of Sawyer Clarke’s body and wanton interference and withholding of his body from his families for burial and would cause additional unnecessary decomposition of the infant’s body,” according to the lawsuit.
The coroner recovered Sawyer’s remains and kept them, the lawsuit said.
At least three times over the next four months, the coroner asked Walsh if he could release the boy’s remains and was told no, the lawsuit said.
On Dec. 15, 2022, DiSalle signed an order releasing the body to Sawyer’s family. It was not clear what prompted DiSalle’s decision.
Sawyer was cremated.
The lawsuit includes claims for abuse of corpse, wanton mistreatment of Sawyer’s remains and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
A second death certificate
The lawsuit also accuses Walsh of cherry-picking the coroner’s office that would do Sawyer’s autopsy.
While the alleged injuries occurred in Washington County, Sawyer died in Allegheny County at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
The lawsuit alleges that Walsh had his first assistant contact the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office 30 minutes after Sawyer died seeking to have the autopsy conducted in Washington County.
“Not only did defendant Walsh file murder charges without an opinion from a forensic pathologist that a homicide occurred, Walsh improperly and unethically steered the case away from the Allegheny County Office of the Medical Examiner in an unethical effort to control what the ultimate opinion/conclusion would be on the manner of the death,” the lawsuit said.
The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office listed the cause of death to be intracranial hemorrhage and the manner as “could not be determined.”
The lawsuit alleges that Walsh was so displeased by those findings that he directed Warco to file another death certificate with the state, listing the cause of death as shaken baby syndrome.
However, the state Office of Vital Statistics rejected the secondary death certificate, the complaint said.
Walsh should be disbarred for his actions and charged with obstruction of justice, the lawsuit said.
Geary said he plans to forward his complaint to the state Attorney General’s Office and ask for an investigation.
‘Not the usual way’
Experts told TribLive that the decision to keep Sawyer’s body for so long is uncommon.
“Holding a body for seven months is distinctly unusual,” said Dr. Mary Jumbelic, the former chief medical examiner of Onondaga County, New York, where Syracuse is located. “Most of what you should be able to ascertain, you should be able to do sooner than that.”
Dr. Peter Mazari, a forensic pathologist who practices in New Jersey, agreed.
“It’s pretty atypical to retain the body — especially not a body that’s not in a marked state of decomposition,” he said.
If there is a delay, it is normally only a few days or a week.
“There are circumstances where you might hold on to a body or remains,” he said. “Those are usually centered around identification procedures.”
If questions remain about the cause of death in a child, or there is a likely criminal investigation, the forensic pathologist will typically retain the brain and eyes and sections of internal organs, and sometimes the heart, Mazari said.
“We release the body, but the investigation may still be continuing,” Jumbelic said. “The usual protocol is get as much information and retain the specimens that could be needed.”
Holding a body for seven months, Mazari said, will make it more difficult to study.
“Obviously, refrigerating or freezing is going to slow the process down. But once an autopsy is done … no matter how cold it is, there will be an ongoing decomposition that will preclude an optimal evaluation process,” he said.
“Just to hold a body with no plan in mind because there are criminal proceedings is not the usual way that it’s done,” Jumbelic said.
Both experts also said that it is not uncommon to amend a death certificate after additional information is learned.
However, Jumbelic said it should be done by the same office that issued it initially.
“Having the coroner in another county file a new death certificate is outside the bounds of how it typically would be handled.”